


Inter Terra

by DoctorBane



Category: LIMBO (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Giant Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-21 06:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorBane/pseuds/DoctorBane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A boy wakes up in a very strange place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inter Terra

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ride_Forever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ride_Forever/gifts).



When the boy woke up, he found himself lying in the middle of a dark wood. As he lay on the ground, he tried to remember how he had got into this situation. He could remember being in a car with his sister, but he couldn’t remember what happened afterwards. But he knew he had to find his sister. He got up and started running forwards. As he ran, he felt strange. These woods felt familiar to him, yet they also felt completely alien. He couldn’t tell why he felt this way, but he knew that didn’t matter. All the boy knew was that he had to find his sister. He ran up a fallen tree trunk, slid down the hill on the other side, and stayed standing, just like a super-hero. If he hadn’t been feeling so scared for his sister, he would have smiled. But there was no time for that. He could see there was a hole in the ground before him, and he went over, and had a look.

The hole was full of spikes, sharp enough to pierce a fly.

Why? Who had put these here? It was clear to him that there was something terribly wrong. How had he gotten to this place, devoid of almost all colours, except black and grey?

That wasn’t important at this point. He was sure that if there were any strange natives here, he would meet them. All he knew was that he had to get over this hole. The boy took a nervous step back, then another, and then started running and he leapt over the evil spikes, landing neatly on the other side. Now he knew something wasn’t right. Back home, he was never much of a sportsman. How come now, all of a sudden, he could leap over holes so easily? Well, he supposed he was about to find out.

He set off running again, but it wasn’t long before he found another obstacle blocking his path. It was a large wooden platform, far too tall for him to reach-he was only little after all- but he could see a handle poking out from it. He grabbed hold of it, and heaved it. He pulled and pulled, and each time he pulled, he felt something moving. Eventually, he let go, and before him, was a mine cart. He jumped up, grabbed the ledge, pulled with all his strength, and was amazed when he pulled himself up. Since when did he have enough strength to do this? He had always been the weakest child in his year at school-in fact he was weaker than some of the children in the years below him-and yet here he was doing amazing feats of strength! He was stunned. He climbed up onto the top of the platform, and ran over to the other side. He could only see a rope in front of him, and looked down to see what was below him. Below him was the ground, too far down to jump. He only had one option then. He jumped at the rope, and clung on with all the strength he could muster. Then, he began the descent down the rope. As he reached the bottom, he let go, and once again, landed neatly on the ground. He ran, jumped over a hole in the ground, and continued running into a dark cave.

 

On the other side, the boy found a boat. Unsure of what else to do, he climbed into the boat. As soon as he got into it, it started to move as if it had a mind of its own. As he stood in the boat, the boy suddenly remembered something.

He was sat in a car next to his sister, who was crying. He was crying too. There was a man in the driver’s seat, a very bad man. He had taken them while they were exploring in the woods. The boy knew that he was never going to see his parents again, and for one moment, he wasn’t sad any more.

He was furious.

He undid his seat-belt, gripped the man’s head in his hands, and felt his fingers go into something soft and gooey.

The man screamed as the boy’s fingers went into his eyes. Out of control, the car flew off the road, heading straight for a tree, and-

That was all the boy remembered. He must have lost consciousness in the crash, because the next thing the boy remembered was waking up in the middle of the woods. He was just trying to see if there was anything else he remembered, but then he felt a sharp bump. He looked at the front of the boat, and realised he had come to the other side of the lake. He climbed out of the boat, and started running forward. However, there was a small cliff in front of him, once again too tall for him to climb up. However, the boy realised that he could pull the boat up, climb onto it, then grab the edge of the cliff and climb up that. Once he did that, he saw that there was a tree in front of him. Looking at it, he realised that he could climb up it. He climbed all the way up the tree, and stood on top of it. He was amazed by this tree and all the others as he walked forwards. The branches were so close together, that he could walk on top of the trees as easily as if he were on the ground. As he walked on, he found another notch of cliff that he scrambled up onto, and continued on from there.

He had been running on for a few moments at this point when he saw something fluttering about. It was a butterfly. Seeing one here, in this sad and lonely place, made him smile briefly. His sister loved butterflies. He was about to move on, when he stopped. He wasn’t sure what made him stop; he just had this sense that there was danger around. He looked down, and that was when he saw the bear trap. Its evil metal teeth almost seemed to grin at him, almost beckoning him to step on it. There was another one in front of it as well. He couldn’t jump over them, so he bent down, grabbed the edge of the trap, and started moving it. The trap was warm and sticky, and the boy had to be careful not to throw up. When he had moved the evil contraption far enough, he jumped over it, then ran and jumped over the next one. He kept running, holding down the bile that was rising in his stomach.

After about five minutes, he came to a rope which had some carcass hanging off of it. There were flies buzzing around it, and the stench was overpowering. This time the boy did throw up, in a bush to the side. Then he took a deep breath, jumped at the rope, and climbed up as far as he could, away from the thing that had once been a living creature. But then he realised that he couldn’t climb high enough to reach the cliff. The rotting corpse was weighing down the branch. The child swung, let go and hit the wall, landing on his back. Tears filled the boy’s eyes, but he blinked them away. He had to be strong. He had to find some way to get the fly-ridden carcass off the rope. He looked, and saw another bear-trap. He dragged it under the carcass, climbed up the mound of earth, and jumped back onto the rope. His weight, along with the weight of the corpse, pulled the branch the rope was attached to down, and before he knew it, the trap snapped shut, pulling the carcass off, and letting the boy climb high enough to swing from the rope to the edge of the cliff. When he climbed up that, he started running again. He started running up another tree log, but he heard a rumbling. He saw a huge rock rolling towards him. He turned around, and started running back down the log, aware of the boulder getting closer and closer to him. At the last minute, he managed to get up a mound of earth, and the rock hit the mound, before stopping. The boy spent a few minutes catching his breath, before continuing on.

After walking on for another five or ten minutes-he wasn’t really sure, time seemed to pass differently in the woods-he saw a huge tree in front of him. Just as he started walking on, he saw a huge, hairy leg-easily twice as long as him-stamp on the ground. The boy froze in his tracks, terrified. He could see a giant, circular shape in front of him.

It was a spider. A huge spider.

The boy hated spiders. He remembered reading the Lord of the Rings, and being terrified of Shelob. He had had nightmares for weeks.

Well, Shelob was here. And this was no nightmare.

The boy tried to run, but couldn’t. He was too scared. His legs wouldn’t obey the signals his brain was sending them. The spider’s leg hovered in the air, and then struck. It pierced through the boy’s chest.

The boy was terrified, because he could feel the life leaking out of him, in his blood. He knew he was going to die.

He closed his eyes.

When the boy woke up, he was lying just a few feet away from where the spider had killed him. The boy was shocked. What had just happened? Why was he alive, and OK? He looked down at his jumper. It was stained red, and had a hole in it. He felt his chest. There was no hole. He was really confused now. Wherever he was, it was a very strange place. He walked forwards, knowing that the spider was there. The leg struck down, missing the boy by about an inch. The boy managed to get himself to turn and run this time, and saw the bear trap. That was when he had an idea. He jumped over the bear trap, and started pushing it towards the spider. The spider’s leg struck down, but struck the bear trap. The trap snapped shut on the spider’s leg. A terrible high pitched sound echoed through the air as the spider scurried away, missing part of its leg. For a moment, a rush of pity went through the boy, but then it was gone.

It was about twenty minutes after that, when the boy saw another boy. The boy grinned, and waved. The other boy turned and ran. The boy wondered why the other child had run, when he heard a crash behind him. He turned around, and saw the giant spider behind him again. Filled with horror, the boy turned and started to run, into a cave. Each step the boy took into the cave, the harder he found it to walk, until he was unable to move at all. The boy looked down, and realised he had just walked into the biggest collection of spider-silk he had ever seen. It was strange; it didn’t seem to feel like anything, which was why he’d walked so far into it. But he could still feel the huge presence of the spider behind him. He was terrified, completely unable to move. He felt himself being lifted into the air, the silk beneath him tearing as if it were tissue paper. The spider wrapped him up in a cocoon, and then hung him up onto the ceiling. The boy could barely see, and could not free his arms. He waited for the spider to eat him, because he knew that was going to happen. But it did not happen. The boy waited there for a few minutes, before realising the spider had left. Why? Was it saving him for later? Was it just being malicious? All he knew was that he had to escape as soon as possible. He started to swing on the bit of silk holding him to the ceiling, trying to go forwards, when it suddenly snapped, and he landed painfully on his arm. But before he knew what was going on, he started rolling down a hill, going faster and faster, until the silk was knocked off of him. He lay on the ground, bleeding from a cut on his knee and hand, waiting until the world stopped spinning around. He looked up, and saw a figure in front of him, with its back turned to him. It was small, looked familiar, and was crying.

It was his sister.

The boy forgot about all of his troubles, and shouted her name. She turned around, took one look at him, and shouted his name.

“It’s me, it’s really me, I’ve really found you,” the boy said to her.

“But how are you standing? And why are you here? You died...” his sister said to him, motioning to the body behind her. It was the boy’s body.

“I know, I remember now. I died because I had taken my seat-belt off, but you lasted longer. But I remained in Purgatory, or Limbo, or whatever it was called, because I had to bring you with me,” the boy explained.

“But I’m not dead,” the girl said.

“No, but you won’t last much longer,” the boy said.

“Come. We have to go home,” he said, as his sister died.


End file.
